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I imagine that sometimes the pitch for a new board game must sound a lot like the pitch for the weird blockbuster movie of a year. “It’s a Patience game, only you can play it with friends and it’s about rescuing people from the Titanic.” It probably wasn’t an easy sale, but here it is: SOS Titanic, the multiplayer solitaire game with superpowers.

Times were hard during the prohibition, and you couldn’t even take a drink to make them easier. Except if you were the criminal element, then you had all the booze you could drink with enough left to turn a huge profit. And gambling and cigars on the side, too. Or you end up deep in debt with the other mobsters calling for your head.

The date is December 8 2127, and for exactly a year and a day, Earth has been at war. They came from deep space, no one is sure what their plans with Earth are. But we know one thing: those plans don’t involve us.

Age of Thieves is not a game about collecting victory points or anything mundane like that. It is about nothing less but fleeing a city under a full-fledged state of alarm – with guards roaming the streets and alleys – while casually carrying the most valuable jewels you can out of the city.

Space is big. Big and empty. That’s what our science teachers told us. It’s also dead – and deadly – wrong. Wherever our exploration vessel shows up, nasty things are just waiting to blow us up. To get back in one piece, all players have to cooperate and deal with a tight time limit while the computer is yelling at them about everything going wrong.

Marie Cardouat’s game illustrations have always been in a style fitting for beautiful children’s books, and that is still just as true in HOP!. Beyond the illustrations, the game’s story is equally made for kids. After finding a book describing a magical kingdom in the sky, the child heroes of HOP! decide that they have to see the realm of magical creatures living in the clouds for themselves. And once that decision is made, it is a matter of moments before they are floating into the sky, each carried by a handful of balloons. And just like that you’re in the middle of a dexterity game for the whole family, and prettier than pretty much any other game out there.

There once was an onmyo master, a teller of fortune and summoner of spirits. This onmyo master had two children, both thinking only they deserve to inherit his title. And so the two children fight, with the spirits they summon, over who is the greater summoner and thus deserving of the title. That’s the short story behind the Onitama, an abstract game that barely takes longer than telling its story.

Contrary to most places you go to eat now, modern sushi was originally a type of fast food if Wikipedia is to be believed. It’s thus very fitting that Sushi Go! is a fast food type of game: you play it quickly, with no preparation needed, and then you go back for a second helping. Unlike fast food, however, you don’t have to feel guilty after Sushi Go!, it makes you neither fat nor sick, only entertained.